Try again, and when you respond next time try using more facts and evidence, and also consider the bigger picture. It is dead wrong to assume the life of an ancient forager was unfulfilling or miserable. You say by "today's terms" and therein lies the main issue. Since our early days we have set up social contraptions that keep us running the rat race our whole lives, in essence it's what has been destroying us. Consider these facts for a minute before you draw another emotional conclusion. In today's industrial societies, people don't need to know much about the natural world in order to survive. We have very narrow knowledge about different small fields and rely blindly on the help of other experts whose knowledge is also limited. There is some evidence that the average size of our brains has actually decreased. The average forager had superior knowledge of their immediate surrounding than most of us. After the agricultural and industrial revolutions arrived, people increasingly began to rely on the skills of others to survive, and new niches for imbeciles were created. As a result we have been passing on crappier genes to the next generation. Sure, collectively today's society knows much more than our ancestors, but at the individual level we are much less capable.The life of a hunter gatherer may not have been glamorous by today's standards, but they enjoyed a much more rewarding and comfortable lifestyle than most of the serfs, laborers and office workers who followed. It is common for people in the developing world to work up to 80 hrs a week (doing the same unrewarding redundant work all day) and then go home to spend the little time left with family and cleaning. Sure, our ancestors might have lived in rough terrains and faced harsh conditions, but they had more active, interesting and wholesome lives than we do today. Foragers had ideal nutrition and were less likely to suffer from starvation or malnutrition and were taller and healthier than the peasants you describe. Sure, average life expectancy was much lower, but that's mainly due to high child mortality rates. Contrary to what many think, foragers also suffered less from infectious diseases. Most of the illnesses and plagues we know today came during the industrial and agricultural revolutions. It is ignorant to think that a vast majority of the world's population can have a better standard of living by "today's terms". The reality is we have mainly created tiered classist societies which depend on the majority of the population being work bees who feed economies and the wealthy. That is an unchangeable fact. Tty to keep up or stick to things you know
U R Wrong From the Get Go wrote:
SatansDengue wrote:Amongst a laundry list of issues, poverty is a problem that arose from overpopulation of humans...
You are wrong right out of the box. The natural state of humans was ALWAYS what would be described in today's terms as poverty.
Small and deformed stature, death by disease and starvation, VERY short average lifespans, extremely limited intellectual and creative lives...this was the lot of humans LONG before anyone could in any reasonable way describe humans as overpopulating the planet.
More succinctly - nasty, brutish and short.
Try starting again from a position that isn't 100% WRONG.